


Prismatic

by orphan_account



Category: C-Clown, K-pop
Genre: F/M, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2018-02-27 21:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2707610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He believes that life is nothing but a series of switches that toggle between varying levels of light and darkness. She knows that there is a full spectrum of colours hiding behind every blinding flick of the lever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prismatic

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first published in Asianfanfics; it has been backdated to reflect the original date of completion.

It is a slow descent: a minuscule wisp of crystal, elegant fingers webbing out, reaching through and touching frozen tips to carve an intricate design that nothing and no one can replicate or remember. It falls infinitely, its leisurely pace slowed down even more as my senses are heightened exponentially by the definite knowledge that I am about to meet my end.

_I am about to die._

Five minutes; maybe four. Maybe more.

Who am I to count the minutes? It will happen, as surely as this snowflake on the tip of my nose will never be seen again. I will melt, as it does. We are only bits of ice in this universe: products of conflicting forces, destined to fall into the world and decorate the rest of humanity. We either melt instantly or meld into the populace seamlessly, creating a stronghold of either chaos or amusement. Either way, we shall melt all the same.

We are one of two things: we are either black or white. We are happy or sad. We are good or bad. We are contented or not.

I have been called kind. I have been called gleeful. I am contented. There is no need to go on, if such stagnancy is my life.

This is just the painless touch of a blowtorch flame to the ice of my existence: I am melting.

 

I am much too sleepy to go on.

 

* * *

 

He stands from a short distance away, half admiring a rather simple funeral service that breaks the peaceful quiet of the city graveyard; the other half of him regrets it, but then his actions are irreversible. He wonders what the noonday sunlight feels like on his mourners’ skins as the cold seasonal air nips in soft gusts at their bare faces, and he is suddenly thankful that he has at least retained his vision.

This morbidly picturesque tableu is interrupted by one slow-moving old man, apparently picking up random bits and pieces from the frozen ground, and Kim Hyunil hopes that it is only a momentary blemish to his little death party.

_That name._

Was he even Kim Hyunil now, if his body lay rotting underneath layers and layers of dirt? That body was the one given the name: it even has a cute little headstone marked and labelled with it.

“You can be anybody you want to be now, of course.”

 

The old man… did he really speak to him? Hyunil looks around the empty section from which he has been spying on his own funeral, unsure and uncomfortable at the sharp grey eyes looking straight at him. Beneath the many ragged coats, he is sure that a powerful being lurks.

“You’re dead, aren’t you? Your name means nothing, because you are now nobody but yourself.” His raspy voice sounds annoying in Hyunil's nonexistent ears, and he is gripped by a sudden desire to be _not_  dead, if only to spite this omniscient stranger’s words. He is contented with how he handles life, or whatever this is.

“Contentment isn’t everything, you know,” the man intones shrewdly. He shuffles forward until finally reaching the boy’s direct line of sight; his tall frame hunched, he continues in a conspiratorial whisper, “There are a lot of other things, like uncertainty and happiness and desire. You _did_ have those, didn’t you?”

“Excuse me,” Hyunil flinches backwards, even as he cannot smell or see anything innately wrong with the man. “But who in the world are you?”

The ancient being smiles, his teeth crooked and yellowed, and Hyunil is gripped by a strong suspicion of who he is dealing with. Or, rather, who is dealing with him.

“I am not of the world, as you know.”

“So,” the boy questions. “Which one are you?”

The man shrugs and turns away to watch the funeral before responding. “The one who likes speaking to asses like you.”

Hyunil begins a sharply rendered retort, but is interrupted.

“Congratulations. You’ve been promoted.”

 

 

·················

 

 

_“So why am I a guardian angel again?”_

_“Because good teachers learn from their students”_

_“You’re not making any sense.”_

_“Just make sure that she doesn’t end up like you.”_

_“Sure, sure.”_

_“By the way, you can’t speak to her while she’s awake. You will be retaining your daytime sight, though.”_

 

Endless rows of filing cabinets filled with documentations of past memories are crammed into the enormous office assigned to the boy once known as Hyunil. On the tiny desk is a piece of paper printed with the essential details of his ward.

Im Chaehong. Female. 18 years old.

He has not bothered reading past her address, because he is now intently watching two large mirrors set directly on the wall in front of the chair he rests on.

Both are oval, with intricately carved cream frames. He cannot tell the difference between the materials used. Apparently, the one made out of ivory presents glimpses of memories related to the events shown on the horn one; the latter is like a reality show of what Chaehong should be seeing and hearing, while from the former emanates abstract images and random snatches of meaningless sounds, smells and tastes. The boy can also sense what the girl would have felt on her skin, but he prefers to take no notice of this. The arrangement is freaky enough as it is.

The boy formerly known as Hyunil is now living inside a girl’s head.

He has no idea what she looks like because there seems to be a lack of mirrors and reflective surfaces wherever the girl looks, which appears to be everywhere. He cannot possibly live her life; his face is much too pretty to be ignored. At least the desk is topped with very smooth glass; at least he got his face back.

Soon enough, he realises that there will be no need for it, in any case.

 

She studies at a rival school, but this does not matter. She cannot see the blooming trees looming above the bench she spends breaks sitting on: this is the important detail he cannot ignore. Obviously. It explains the many bumps and smooth planes his fingertips constantly feel with the confusingly abstract memories he has been taking peeks at.

The Braille books say that she cannot see herself.

 

△▽△

 

It is finally night time, and she has fallen asleep. He is beginning to wonder if she can see in her dreams, when his office changes into something strikingly similar to the intangible visuals shown within the ivory frame: highly contrasting colour patterns of triangles decorate the walls while oddly shaped polyhedra of scary-looking stars and heavy flowers fly, zipping above his head. They are ever-shifting forms, similar to those old-school screensaver renders in the computers of ages past, swimming in a vast sea of searing bright light.

For a moment, he is the only living being in what is certain to be the dream of the girl, when she gradually materialises before him.

He is stunned, enraptured. He does not hear his words as they echo throughout the cosmic dream space. “Can you see?”

She smiles, amused. “Of course.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I just know,” she asserts. She moves close and raises up her hands until they reach his face.

He is disheartened, but this is overtaken with the shocking realisation that he has allowed her to break through his personal borders, never minding that he has taken up residence within her mind.

“Do you really have to do that?”

She laughs softly with disbelief at the idiocy of this interloper in her world. “How else would I be able to see you?”

Her fingertips run through sloping hillocks of brows and eyes, over the sharp peak of his nose, skimming through the course of his smooth cheeks before feeling the soft curves of his lips.

“What’s your name?”

Staring fixedly at the features he is seeing for the first time, he realises that her silver eyes shine with a light that they have stolen from a world that she cannot see.

And he whispers, because this is all that is necessary within her universe.

 

“I have no idea.”

 

 

·················

_  
_

_  
_

Ray: as if he is a newly-adopted pet, she names him.

Ray: as if he is as bright as the sunbeams softly filtering through her lightless eyelids, she names him.

 

He is hardly as cheery as she makes him out to be. Apparently, he is the first person to accompany her in this particularly lurid chronic fantasy. There is no reason for the name, in any case. He would have watched her, advised her, anyway; he would have observed her life just as closely, even without the nickname.

 

He would only have to miss one thing without it: he would miss out on being her friend.

 

He would have spent his nights like a nine-to-five job, shuffling pages and pages of new information endlessly being spat out by the clunky printer that manifested itself, along with a tiny sticky note, shortly after their first shared dream came to an end and he tried to rest his feet onto the tiny office table.

Sort out her memories; while you’re at it, try reading them.  
You might need some background information someday.

Well, the note did say _try_ ; he _tried_  and, subsequently, failed to be entertained by the long blocks of text. In a plane where sleep is unnecessary, he finds himself drifting off into dreams of his own past while trying to learn more about the girl’s life. Upon abandoning such hopelessly useless and tiresome activities, he finds himself amused by watching her steps, scrutinising her actions and listening in to her conversations like an overzealous gossip. He finds himself waiting for the weekly dream where the two of them meet and exchange ideas, his input more forcibly persuading than anything. It is his job, after all.

In a plane involuntarily monopolised and manipulated by one girl perceived as a pushover by most people, he finds that intimacy can be achieved even without sharing vastly convoluted pasts or holding on together to one half-owned present. He finds that simple conversations littered with nothing but sprinklings of mundane reality on glimmering bases of preposterous dreams can be more cherished than half-forgotten childhood embarrassments and doubts.

On those moments, engulfing and encompassing, when he simply watches her world from eyes she cannot see with, he cannot help but feel spaces and spaces apart: he cannot comprehend.

 

△▽△

 

“Ray?”

Her tone is playful, teasing; his name is the ground point of many of their exchanges.

“What now?”

In contrast to his severely clipped words, he smiles invitingly and encouraging.

“Nothing. You hate that name, don’t you?”

She bites her lip involuntarily, suppressing a tiny grin. Apparently, it is today’s joke.

“Would you hate this if you knew this was a dream?”

Instantly, he regrets saying it out loud.

 

She dissolves away and the rainbow-y space morphs into his bland old office.

 

 _“_ _Rules of the Dreaming; haven’t you noticed? A dream is only real while you don’t know that it isn’t._ _”_

 

On her bed, Chaehong tosses and turns; she is fully awake, slightly disturbed by a hazy, interrupted happiness.

 

△▽△

 

She has been dating somebody, and the boy formerly known as Hyunil isn’t jealous; no, he isn’t jealous at all.

Rather, he feels wary. How easy it would be to cop a feel at a blind girl and pass it off as an accident. He knows he would, if he could, but he shunts that particular thought aside. Granted, Chaehong is smart enough to tell apart what is intentional and what isn’t; but she’d still be nice enough to smile and ignore any distasteful meanings.

Not that he thinks of her as weak, either. The girl is tough and crusty, despite her sweetly delicate exterior. _Still_ , he thinks. _Still._

 

He is attempting not to pay much attention to the events presented by the two mirror frames. Two ears trying not to listen to the sounds radiating from the mirror frames, his hands mechanically fold paper airplanes out of the official memory logs. They come out of the ivory frame whenever bidden by the girl on whose eyes the images of the horn frame are reflected, anyway.

Distracted by memories of the previous nights— of lightly calloused hands pressing into his own, filling the gaps between his fingers, as quietly breathed-out whispers are intimately given out to his uncontrollably hearing ears— he tries to thrust away his mind’s nagging feelings of resentment. What is a mind doing inside a mind, anyway?

 

In his negligence, he fails to notice another girl as she violently pushes _his_ girl backwards.

 

△▽△

 

It has been four months. Five, maybe. Ray never counts anything anymore, anyway. He never takes notice of the dates typed down by Im Chaehong’s rapidly moving fingers. What he usually sees are straight lines weaving in with swiftly looping curves, ends touching to form a circle, eyes transferred onto a screen that sees more than what she can. They peer up hopefully at their Maker, endlessly and futilely wishing to hold a conversation with her on a medium she cannot grasp. He has stopped flinching whenever the robotic voice speaks to tell her what she has written. Instead, he detects the little habits that hint at thoughts that none of the two mirrors can show. Like how she pulls up a clump of her hair to bite at whenever she is stuck at a sentence. Like how her toes rhythmically tap at the air whenever she has finds that she likes what she is talking about.

Lately, she has been showing a lack of animation. Ray thinks back to how the stranger pushed her months ago, shrieking and pointing and saying repeatedly, _I don’t like you_. He remembers how she confronted him— Chulmin, that was his name. She asked and he confirmed that, yes, that was his girlfriend.

He remembers how the students around protected her from the maniacally enraged woman; it was then that he realised how important she was to them not just as a blind girl but as a treasured friend who likes to hang out under the trees with the premise of reading but always inexplicably ends up talking about SHINee’s new release, who borrows and loses hair clips with overflowing apologies, who generally gives the best love advice that she cannot follow.

It has been four months. Five, maybe.

She still goes back to dial his number— Chulmin’s, that bastard; he didn’t even try— just to delete it before trying to get back to work.

 

Today, though, is different. She is in a heavy hooded coat, lumbering through the late afternoon stirrings of alleyways half-asleep and a frigid wintry atmosphere. Children’s voices emanate from the ivory frame, giggling over forbidden treasures and a brand-new hiding place. Over the heavy footsteps, the voices skip through years and time begins to lose consistency in her indistinct flashbacks as she reaches the foot of a rotting building, its top torn open on one side; the _Danger: Keep Out_ sign makes it the perfect illicit fort of childhood rebelliousness.

Somehow, within the depths of his apathetic heart, Ray wishes he could be there; to do what, he is uncertain. Chaehong, however, seems set and definite in her actions. This is his first time seeing her this way. Even in their weekly conversations, her responses are peppered with hazy _maybe_ s.

Teardrops trickle from her unseeing eyes, and Chaehong stumbles on the familiar grimy ground. The splintered opening she used to sneak into is much smaller than before and as she squeezes through with much difficulty, the scratches on her skin prickle on Ray’s unblemished exterior. She reaches the floor she used to play in, a hallway used as a storage area of sorts where putrid old furniture and curiosities abound. But, apparently, she is unsatisfied.

She moves up one floor, then another.

 

Through the dust and the unheated stairways, she continues.

 

Finally, she reaches the top where the frosty wind howls through the demolished side and bites at her pinched face. It is at the edge of this side that she stops.

 

 

·················

 

 

_“Have you ever lived my life?”_

It is her best friend— was. They had, apparently, lost contact shortly before Ray began spending his days inside Chaehong’s head. The other girl moved away as her parents took hold of opportunities for better ways of living; she transferred to another school because of the shame brought about by her actions: the same things Chaehong did, but with much less support given.

 _“Have you ever spent_ one minute _in my shoes?”_

She is crying, spitting out epithets and moving away disgustedly for Chaehong judging her and not being her friend. The amount of time spent in his ward’s mind has made Ray familiar with the sensations let out by the ivory frame. On his arms, a small pair of hands furiously slaps and pushes him away to nowhere the memory can say. He feels a cold shiver run through his body. It is an atmosphere of foreboding loss. It comes from the memory, but he cannot help but think that this is what will happen soon enough.

_“If you haven’t…”_

Her voice fades to a whisper, an artificial one: it is a tampered memory. Chaehong does not want to remember; but, of course, she does. The girl in the memory also lowers her voice, and he can hardly hear; but he does, because deep-rooted thoughts can never be touched by the frost of forgetfulness.

_“Why do you judge me like you do?”_

 

Chaehong leans forward and ice begins to crawl gently down the air from the sky.

The boy, once known as Kim Hyunil, renamed by her as Ray; he used to curse these things. _Snowflakes_ , they are called. Cold and wet and hopelessly clinging onto you until they melt; and they melt fast, but he still did not like them. How he would love to feel them on his skin tonight.

How he would love to have one— one hundred, or one thousand, or maybe more— crash down on his skin, only because it would mean that he would have the power to stop her from crashing down into the rough pavement.

Even he wasn’t so unforgiving to himself. If anything, he never forgave the world.

 

And her drop begins.

 

And, in his mind within her mind, he prays.

_God, help me._

It is a long shot; a desperate appeal to one he does not believe will listen. Besides, he means  _her_.

Still, in his mind within her mind, a voice comes and answers.

 

_Of course._

 

△▽△

 

Kim Hyunil— Hyunil, not Ray— sits on the sharp edge of the fire exit near his parents’ eleventh-floor apartment, one hand clutching a mug crusted at the bottom with dried ketamine, scrounged secretly from his mother’s ever-growing stash, while from the hooked fingers of the other hangs a heroin-filled syringe; he does not want to know where she get her supplies. He has just woken up from a dream; but how could he have awakened from a dream spent on a few thin metal bars and not move to fall completely? It really would have been more acceptable if he woke up in a hospital bed fresh from a coma.

Snowflakes begin to descend from the heavens; and he looks up, waiting for that first bit of crystal to land on and melt on his nose.

Five minutes; maybe four. Maybe more.

Perhaps it is his anticipation that jinxes it, or maybe it is something else, but the snowflake never comes.

In the interim, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, it is the _maybe_ s that make life so worth spending and risking everything on. It is the uncertainty of light filtering through a solid piece, splitting into a myriad differing beams. It is the unpredictable shifting of eerie shapes and impossibly blinding colours, melting and forming and burning and freezing and just _being_ as they are.

The recurring dream within the dream comes to mind, and he thinks that _maybe_ it is real enough; maybe, the places are real enough for the old building, the decrepit urban ruin, to be there. Just there, and nothing else.

He goes to his room to get a jacket and, as an afterthought, empties the contents of his mother’s secret hiding places into a black trash bag that he knots and dumps into the first rubbish bin outside their building.

A bus ride and a few minutes of walking takes him there and, as he goes up the steps Chaehong tripped on and barrelled through determinedly and unseeingly, a cold shiver passes his skin. It is an atmosphere of foreboding. Of what, he is uncertain.

He reaches the floor he stood on shortly before through the mind of another.

 

And two syllables flit out of his lips.

 

“Chaehong.”

 

 

She turns to face him, brow creased in disbelief, silvery eyes looking everywhere but the direction Ray's voice originates.

 

 

 

She does not turn back again.


End file.
